Two days after the acclaimed conductor died, the Sydney Chamber Choir gathered to rehearse for Richard Gill’s “Birthday Bash”.

At the express wish of the family, the event on Monday night will go ahead, as a chance for the ensembles he had worked with to pay tribute. For many of us, the emotions hit as soon as we started warming up. It’s hard to believe there won’t be another rehearsal led by Richard Gill.

I joined the choir in 2017 after being auditioned by Richard. My first program was led by then-assistant conductor Sam Allchurch. On one of the rehearsals, Richard dropped in, promptly proclaimed “You can flatten the A!” and left. He was referring to the uncertainty of pitch – a topic still hotly debated by musicians. The so-called “Baroque pitch” is about a semitone lower than concert pitch – a step between white and black note on the piano. I couldn’t wait to get into his rehearsals, every one a masterclass.

Working with a new conductor is a nerve-wracking experience. As a vision-impaired chorister, my confidence hinges on how well I know the person’s working style – would they breathe loudly at the start of a piece to bring the choir in? Would they ask for full-length notes at the end of phrases or would they cut it off earlier? I was reassured by Richard’s easy humour, and willingness to explain. He had no problem communicating what he wanted, and, from attending previous concerts, I knew that the choir responded to him well. When one relies on audio cues, that’s a great help.

Back then, I thought I’d be working with him for months. But our acquaintance at the end of his working life was marked by absence, and cut short by illness. Still, he didn’t hold back, giving his time generously to rehearse, conduct and take the choir on tour.

Rehearsals were Richard’s space to cajole; to explain the workings of musical minds and mystify his musicians so that, in turn, we’d deliver to the audience the same wonder we experienced. But it’s not always about reverence or wooden respect. What I’ll miss most is his ability to reduce a mythical figure to a sulky teenage girl who just got dumped, or the way he could put Mozart’s frivolous chords in the context of a musical revolution.

“This is operatic stuff. People in the 18th century write masses,” he would say, singing a slow “Kyrie, kyrie” in dotted crotchet, quaver and minim pattern. “They don’t do forte or presto.”

He would say: “Guys, watch me. Don’t predict what I do.” The choir – many qualified musicians, who know a thing or two about music – would be duly shushed, would listen.

He’d used pop references to enrich our understanding of Monteverdi’s Lamento D’Arianna. Fifteen minutes of soliloquy in madrigal form, turned into a tale: “I’m abandoned on Naxos beach and there’s no one here. No boat, no people, no Maccas …” The workings of Dantesque poetry is alternating 7 and 11 syllables, he’d say: “So, Dante was the first to come up with the idea of a supermarket!”

We took the Monteverdi on tour in May this year, shortly before his illness worsened. He conducted us in packed halls after giving masterclasses to local students and teachers. People came to hear us, to see him in action. Yet it wasn’t always easy to maintain the standards.

Richard’s last rehearsal with Sydney Chamber Choir took place in Grafton. Everyone was exhausted from performing a challenging program in unfamiliar venues. Right before he dismissed us, Richard said: “The world is a polarised place. But music will remain.”

He treated us as people with a calling and a job to do. He’d laud some composers and disparage others (mainly for the technical difficulty of bringing their work to life) but he always tried to understand their ideas.

And he knew how grief should be written. Under his direction, Brahms’s Im Herbst was an exquisite lament to getting old. The problem with youth is that we didn’t know how much time we had left, and how precious each moment was.

Richard was a champion of new Australian music. His colleague and predecessor Paul Stanhope wrote on the day of his passing: “I was privileged to have him conduct many of my pieces; he’d always be tinkering with bits along the way. I chorus-mastered for him a few times and it was always a revelation to get a peak [sic] into his amazing mind.”

I mourn most the loss of that amazing mind. Richard’s biggest legacy is us: the performers who have glimpsed his vision; the teachers who continue to open music to their students, and everyone else who’ve been mystified by him.

This is the time to take up the challenge. As an advocate in music literacy, Richard has inspired me to couple big ideas with pragmatism. His philosophy, “music is for everyone”, rings even truer when faced with barriers of form and access.

Music is the gift that keeps on giving and Richard knew that. Josephine Gibson, another choir member, recently dedicated her composition setting of First Dog on the Moon’s cartoon Let them all come to Richard Gill. He didn’t get a chance to conduct it but it would have resonated with his ideals – humanity, social conscience and a commitment to communicating the wonders of classical music while bursting the elitist bubble surrounding it.

Ria Andriani is a soprano with the Sydney Chamber Choir